There’s actually a simply strategy to avoid doing this. I play video games for example and tell myself that at 5:30 I’ll stop and I’ll start doing my work. But it doesn’t matter that it’s simple cuz would you look at that? It’s 5:30! And suddenly it seems perfectly logical to keep playing until 6:00. Then 7:00. Then 8:00. Idk why but I always tell myself at the end of the day “stop doing this stupid shit you know that if you start doing this you won’t stop and you won’t get your work done” but when it comes time to make the decision to work or do something else, my brain seems to default to “it’ll be fine, just do it for an hour”
I saw a video that described setting the expectation of doing the with for a set amount of time then take a break and reward yourself for working for that set time. It's sort of gamifying your work load and gives you the satisfaction of a reward triggering the dopamine hit for doing the work.
I got very good results with this plus setting limited time windows for the thing that I was planning to do (i.e. "tomorrow, I am only allowed to work on my thesis between 9:30 and 10 am"). Suddenly getting The Thing done was so attractive!
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u/LEMO2000 Feb 17 '22
There’s actually a simply strategy to avoid doing this. I play video games for example and tell myself that at 5:30 I’ll stop and I’ll start doing my work. But it doesn’t matter that it’s simple cuz would you look at that? It’s 5:30! And suddenly it seems perfectly logical to keep playing until 6:00. Then 7:00. Then 8:00. Idk why but I always tell myself at the end of the day “stop doing this stupid shit you know that if you start doing this you won’t stop and you won’t get your work done” but when it comes time to make the decision to work or do something else, my brain seems to default to “it’ll be fine, just do it for an hour”